Don’t Hire This Agency

The reason I thought it is worth sharing , is I receive this question in different occasions and the last one was early this month, when a friend sent me an email attaching a proposal for content marketing and SEO work. He is the CEO of a company and wanted to get my advice on the idea , and wither it is something good to consider or not. The first thing I did, I copied their URL and pasted in my browser and went through the website quickly. The findings were not much surprising for me, because this is part of a pattern that goes around any new business demand in the market for web services and marketing activities. So let’s see what did the agency offer.

the agency the puzzle

The Agency offered SEO, Offsite links building, and page by page tags optimisation along with keywords research. And to show more credibility, they have also provided examples for companies that have worked with them on content creation efforts. While few years back this was OK and convincing, now it is not the case at all, because if your website doesn’t say what are you about, then it is difficult to tell, especially for new marketing professionals who use Google as the main search tool for anything. In my quick check for the website I realised that it is an outdated website, no blog, doesn’t support mobile and no active content.

there will be new agencies popping up everyday hunting for the Gold.

Many will ask the valid question “ what is the best digital marketing agency, what is the best digital advertising agency, what is the best social media agency, what is the best content marketing agency, and so on, and there will be new agencies popping up everyday hunting for the Gold. so how can you tell ? As you will see advertising agencies offering digital marketing consultancy, the viral myth, and many crazy thoughts. for example, we are an advertising agency, but we are also experts in viral videos . We did SEO projects in the past and now we are super stars in creating content that sells, but we don’t have a blog in our website and our social media channels are dead, sorry trust us we are cool. So how do you choose the best one that can help you with your digital , social or generic content marketing efforts?

What is the best digital marketing agency in Saudi Arabia?
The answer is basically simple.
1- You make sure you check the website of the agency that you interact with.
2- Check their social media channels, and look them up as much as you can to see what kind of things they do and what have they done so far for others and for themselves specifically. Because if they don’t master it for their brand , how can they help you.
3-Another helpful thing also is to check with your contacts and networks of friends if anyone have worked with them or heard about their work.
4- There are situations where the agency asks you to share your marketing content strategy with them so they can propose something, my take is if the agency will use my strategy , why would I need them in the first place then.

A final note here is, no matter how sophisticated or simple the task you want an agency for, you will always need to have someone in-house to filter what is good what is not in the marketing space , specially in digital and content.

if you work with an agency to help you in digital or content marketing efforts , how did you choose them ?